'Art'


Yasmina Reza - 1994
    The Tony Award-winning play that focuses on the meaning of art (in the form of a solid white painting) as well as the meaning of friendship, to both the man who bought the painting and the two friends who come to see it."

La Cage Aux Folles


Jerry Herman - 1983
    Complete vocal score to the Broadway sensation with 11 songs: The Best of Times * I Am What I Am * A Little More Mascara * Look over There * Song on the Sand (La Da Da Da) * With You on My Arm * and more.

The Heiress (DPS Acting Edition)


Ruth Goetz - 1951
    Catherine's lack of worldliness prevents her from realizing that the young man proposing to her is not entirely drawn to her by her charm. Catherine's father, a successful doctor, sees through the fortune hunter and forbids the marriage, but his daughter proposes an elopement that fails to materialize because the young man knows most of her expected fortune will go elsewhere if he marries her. Catherine retires into a little world of her own. But the fortune hunter turns up once more and again proposes to her. For a moment, Catherine leads him to believe that she will accept him, but when he calls by appointment, she locks the door, blows out all the lights and allows him to realize that she will not be fooled for the second time.

Next to Normal


Brian Yorkey - 2009
    "A brave and breathtaking musical."--The New York Times

A Bright Room Called Day


Tony Kushner - 1994
    His intellectual characters are tremendously passionate and expressive, so it's hard not to care about what they care about, and what happens to them.” –Washington Post“A juggernaut of a play.” -San Francisco Weekly“Unabashedly political, thought-provoking, a little scary and frequently a good deal of theatrical fun… intoxicatingly visionary.” –Sid Smith, Chicago TribunePulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner’s powerful portrayal of individual resolution, irresolution and dissolution in the face of political catastrophe, A Bright Room Called Day follows a group of artists and political activists struggling to preserve themselves in 1930s Berlin as the Weimar Republic surrenders to the seduction of fascism. Often exquisitely lyrical, always exhilaratingly intelligent, the poetic world of the play moves beyond the bounds of historical reality with the morally outraged outpourings of a contemporary New York woman. Her fury at the Reagan and British presidencies brings into stark relief the discomfiting similarities between then and now, and challenges us to remember that although evil may seem inevitable, it is never irresistible.Tony Kushner’s plays include Angels in America; Hydriotaphia, or the Death of Dr. Brown; The Illusion, adapted from the play by Pierre Cornelle; Slavs!; A Bright Room Called Day; Homebody/Kabul; Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; and The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols’s film of Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg’s Munich and Lincoln. His books include The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon.Among many honors, Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.

When the Rain Stops Falling


Andrew Bovell - 2009
    From the writer of the award-winning film Lantana.It interweaves a series of connected stories as seven people confront the mysteries of their past in order to understand their future, revealing how patterns of betrayal, love and abandonment are passed on. Until finally, as the desert is inundated with rain, one young man finds the courage to defy the legacy.

The Language Archive


Julia Cho - 2012
    Closer to home, though, language is failing him. He doesn't know what to say to his wife, Mary, to keep her from leaving him, and he doesn't recognize the deep feelings that his lab assistant, Emma, has for him.

The Young Man from Atlanta


Horton Foote - 1995
    Will and Lily Dale Kidder try to hold onto their beliefs about their son's life and death and the possibilities for their own lives, but both are dealt a shattering blow by the young man of the title, a friend of their son's who never appears in the play. Foote's pitch-perfect characters and sensitive eye for interpersonal relationships continue to place him at the top of playwrights working today.

Tribes


Nina Raine - 2010
    But when he meets Sylvia, who is going deaf, he decides he finally wants to be heard. With excoriating dialogue and sharp, compassionate insights, Nina Raine crafts a penetrating play about belonging, family and the limitations of communication.Nominated for both the Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for Best Play, Tribes premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2011. Under the direction of David Cromer, the comic drama is currently receiving its North American premiere in New York City at Barrow Street Theatre through June 3, 2012.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses


Christopher Hampton - 1985
    Christopher Hampton has made a masterful adaptation for the stage of the conspiracy to corrupt a young girl barely out of her convent.

A Walk in the Woods.


Lee Blessing - 1988
    The Russian, Botvinnik, a seasoned veteran who has mastered the Soviet "hard line," is urbane and humorous but, at the same time, profoundly cynical about what the current sessions can accomplish. His young American counterpart, Honeyman, a newcomer to the arms-control talks, is a bit stuffy and pedantic, but also fervently idealistic about what can and must be achieved through perseverance and honest bargaining. They continue their informal meetings as the talks drag on and the seasons change, and through their absorbing and revealing conversations we become aware both of the deepening understanding between these two wise and decent men and also of the profound frustration that they increasingly feel. In the end, when Botvinnik announces that he is leaving his post, Honeyman is genuinely regretful, not only because of the friendship that has grown between them but also because he knows that he must now confront again the deep-seated mistrust and misconceptions which a "new man" will bring with him and that the elemental differences in their two systems of government will continue to exacerbate as long as the real power rests in the hands of those burdened by the bitterness of the past.

Bent


Martin Sherman - 1979
    Martin Sherman's worldwide hit play Bent took London by storm in 1979 when it was first performed by the Royal Court Theatre, with Ian McKellen as Max (a character written with the actor in mind). The play itself caused an uproar. "It educated the world," Sherman explains. "People knew about how the Third Reich treated Jews and, to some extent, gypsies and political prisoners. But very little had come out about their treatment of homosexuals." Gays were arrested and interned at work camps prior to the genocide of Jews, gypsies, and handicapped, and continued to be imprisoned even after the fall of the Third Reich and liberation of the camps. The play Bent highlights the reason why - a largely ignored German law, Paragraph 175, making homosexuality a criminal offense, which Hitler reactivated and strengthened during his rise to power.

The History Boys


Alan Bennett - 2004
    A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool.In Alan Bennett's classic play, staff room rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose.The History Boys premiered at the National in May 2004.

The Pitchfork Disney


Philip Ridley - 1991
    Manifesting Ridley's vivid and visionary imagination and the dark beauty of his outlook, the play resonates with his trademark themes: East London, storytelling, moments of shocking violence, memories of the past, fantastical monologues, and that strange mix of the barbaric and the beautiful he has made all his own.The Pitchfork Disney was Ridley's first play and is now seen as launching a new generation of playwrights who were unafraid to shock and court controversy. This unsettling, dreamlike piece has surreal undertones and thematically explores fear, dreams and story-telling. First produced in 1991, it has gone on to be recognised as the annunciation of Ridley's dark and seductive world.

hir


Taylor Mac - 2015
    Isaac’s father, who once ruled the family with an iron fist, has had a debilitating stroke; his younger sister, Maxine, is now his brother, Max; and their mother, Paige, is committed to revolution at any cost. Determined to be free of any responsibility toward her formerly abusive husband—or the home he created—Paige fervently believes she can lead the way to a "new world order." Hir, Taylor Mac’s subversive comedy, leaves many of our so-called normative and progressive ideas about gender, families, the middle class—and cleaning—in hilarious and ultimately tragic disarray.